Hurting Hero: Difference between revisions

* In Nick Kyme's ''[[Warhammer 40,000]] Salamanders novel'' ''[[Salamanders|Salamander]]'' novel ''Salamander'', Tsu'gan is deeply grieved by the captain's death and his own failure. {{spoiler|Iagon actually uses it to foment his ambition: fighting at the head of the company would assuage his hurt.}}

* Kvothe in ''[[The Name of the Wind]]'' lost his entire troupe - the people he lived with, and 90% of the people he knew and loved - when he was twelve. [[It Got Worse|Life doesn't treat him much better after that.]]

* Dear god, {{spoiler|Rand Al'Thor}}, the ''Dragon Reborn'' of ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'', is arguably the Patron Saint of this trope. To start out, he has access to the [[Blessed with Suck|tainted male half of magic]], everyone else with access to male magic in the last 3000 years went mad, [[Squick|rotted alive]], and [[Person of Mass Destruction|killed everyone in his vicinity]]. He's fated to destroy the world in saving it. He's responsible for taking the fight to ''Satan Himself'', whose elite followers consider the current crop of Aes Sedai (wizards and witches) to be children ''at best''. Then he discovers that ''his predecessor was literally reborn as a backseat driver in his '''mind.''''' That predecessor is himself only somewhat sane, can't be revealed because it would be assumed that the current Dragon is going insane, has suicidal tendencies, tries to grab the magic out of the current Dragon's hands with regularity, and was well known for killing his entire family as he went insane, realizing for a single moment what he'd done, and committing suicide so dramatically that it made a '''''volcano'''''. The current Dragon is barely more than a teenager from a tiny farm village in the middle of nowhere. He seems fated to be a martyr for humanity. ''Everyone and their mother'' works against him - and most aren't even evil, merely selfish, superstitious, foolish, set in their ways, and determined to control this ''kid'' who is ''clearly'' not in charge of saving the world. His ancestral people have pledged to him - and some of their [[Amazon Brigade|warrioresses]] act as his bodyguards, and he's lived his entire life expecting to protect women with his strength. That in particular scars him so much that he keeps a list of all of the women who have died where you could even hypothetically lay the blame at his feet. He was captured by Aes Sedai and tortured ruthlessly. Alanna once connected her mind to his, and spent the next month crying in the pain of it. Nynaeve, the limit-breaking healer, once looked at his mind and realized that there was nothing she could have done for him {{spoiler|if not for Lews Therin's heroic sacrifice}}. To top it all off, nobody believes him, everyone thinks they know better than him, and as he's trying to save the world, the world is trying its hardest not be saved. He once quipped that the pressure of that alone should be enough to drive him insane, never mind Saidin.{{context|reason=MOD: What work is this from?}}